Robert P. Madison’s long career
as an architect has been distinguished not only by the important
buildings he has designed here and abroad, but by the role he has
played as a mentor and nurturer of talent and as a creator of
opportunities for others. Since Robert P. Madison International was
founded in the mid-1950s, it has trained some 190 African-American
architects and engineers, many of whom have gone on to do distinguished
work, and spawned at least five other black architectural firms.

The
first African-American graduate in architecture in Ohio, Madison
himself embarked on the profession at a time when far fewer
opportunities existed. Indeed, the World War II veteran, who had earned
a Purple Heart in the service of his country, was told, on applying to
Western Reserve University in 1946, that “no colored person had ever
graduated from that school.” He was finally admitted, on the strength
of his work, and later earned a graduate degree from Harvard
University, won an honorable mention in the prestigious Prix de Rome
Architecture Competition and went to Paris as a Fulbright Scholar.

After
winning commissions from the governments of Trinidad and Tobago,
Jamaica, the Bahamas, Nigeria, and the United Arab Emirates, he was
also to design the U.S. Embassy office building and staff residences in
Dakar, Senegal, as well as buildings closer to home, such as the
Tuskegee Institute’s Engineering and Nuclear Facility. And he made up
his mind early to do something else: He would provide a training ground
for other aspiring African-American architects and engineers.

And
what a classroom it has been. Known for its expertise in urban design,
Robert P. Madison International has had a hand in practically every
major downtown building project in the 1990s—from Cleveland Browns
Stadium and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum to the Louis
Stokes Wing of the Cleveland Public Library. Madison and his protegees
have served as principal architects on Continental Airlines Concourses
C and D at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, the Arena at
Gateway, Great Lakes Science Center, the crisply conceived and engaging
stations of the RTA’s Waterfront Line and the Langston Hughes
Branch of the Cleveland Public Library, which Plain Dealer
art and architecture critic Steven Litt has called “one of the best
small new buildings in the city . . . a bright, welcoming building that
makes a big impact on its surroundings despite its relatively
diminutive scale” because of its “commanding pose” and “optimism about
the future.”

A
passionate patron of the arts, Bob Madison has served as a trustee of
the Cleveland Orchestra and Cleveland Opera, of which he is a major
financial supporter. He is a former trustee of Case Western Reserve
University, which has bestowed upon him its distinguished alumnus
award. At the time he received the Special Citation, Madison personally
sponsored WCLV-FM’s “The Black Arts,” whose commercial spots—about
black history, culture, and accomplishments—he wrote himself. He went
on to serve as chairperson of the Cleveland Arts Prize.